April 2, 2012

Rabid Rewind: Sucker Punch

Judging by some of the reviews I read for this movie before finally
seeing it for myself, I was expecting something far more offensive.
As it stands, Sucker Punch is more offensive in terms of
depictions of women than half the anime and other action movies I've
seen over the years. The movie is a mish-mash of genre pastiches that
are given a fresh coat of glitz and hurled at the audience's eyes at
a hundred miles per hour.

Emily Browning plays Baby Doll, a twenty-year-old orphan who is
locked in an insane asylum after accidentally killing her sister
while fending off her evil stepfather. Inside, a crooked orderly
forges a doctor's signature to have Baby Doll lobotomized at the
behest of the evil stepfather. At the moment this occurs, she escapes
into a dreamworld of her own design that has her imprisoned in a
burlesque show that traffics women. Like The Wizard of Oz's
Judy Garland, Emily Browning's character inhabits this dreamland with
the inmates, orderlies, doctors, and others she has interacted with
inside the asylum. The psychiatrist (Carla Cugino) becomes the dance
instructor, the evil orderly becomes the burlesque's promoter, and
her fellow inmates become her fellow dancers. The girls devise a plan
to escape by gathering items like a map, a knife, and a key. But to
do these things, they need to create distractions. For these girls,
the distraction comes in the form of Baby Doll's dance routines,
which the audience never actually sees--perhaps Emily Browning just
can't dance.

To cover up the absence of any dance sequences--remind me to send
Zach Snyder a thank-you note for that--Baby Doll goes into yet
another fantasy land while she performs. Each time it's a different
fantastical setting: there's the samurai warrior fight scene, the
Nazi zombie soldiers, and even a dragon's castle. The whole idea of a
character who has escaped into a dreamworld while already escaping in
a dreamworld feels very Inception-esque,
but with bigger explosions. Each of these sequences is a set piece
wrung for every drop of juice it's worth. High-minded storytelling,
it is not, but the visual spectacle is absolutely mesmerizing. Where
Transformers felt like
my ears and eyes were being curb-stomped by Michael Bay's
masturbatory action sequences, Sucker Punch
offered a more stylized, more sophisticated form of eye candy.The acting is ... passable. Scott
Glen as Baby Doll's version of Yoda was a nice touch, though it takes
a while for his character's presence to come together. And Carla
Cugino is at her sultry best in her role. As for the girls led by
Emily Browning, I suppose you could call them a cross between The
A-Team and Sailor
Moon. They kick a lot of ass and
look pretty doing it. The weightier aspects of the story kind of get
thrown under the bus for the sake of visual magic tricks, but I
wasn't expecting much more than that anyway.

Honestly, if I was supposed to be
offended by the movie, I must be a horrible human being, because I
actually rather liked it. I don't know if I'll be in a hurry to watch
it a second time, but it was fun the first time around.